Let's get started! | On-boarding experience for children and caregivers in pediatric cancer care designed in collaboration with Kids&Art.
I was one of the experience designers working on this 11-week onboarding experience project, responsible for primary and secondary research, concept creation, low and high fidelity prototyping and testing.
Skills: UX, UI, Prototyping
We received an Honorable Mention in Social Impact
Project Summary
Kids&Art is a non-profit that offer support programs to families and children going through pediatric cancer treatment. However, the organization experienced problems onboarding patients into their programs early in the cancer treatment process, which delays the benefits to families who really need it. We redesigned the experience systemically to include all stakeholders (children, caregivers and hospital staff) to make sure it would reach the users sooner.
Cancer sucks, but Kids&Art can make it a less isolating experience.
A cancer diagnosis is life-changing, even more so when
it involves kids.
The Kids&Art Foundation
The Kids&Art foundation is a non-profit organization that uses
the power of the arts and creativity to mitigate stress,
anxiety and trauma induced by diagnoses and treatment
of pediatric cancer and other critical medical conditions.
They offer many services such as art workshops, curated art
kits and parent support groups.
Kids&Art can provide families going through
a pediatric cancer journey with much needed relief.
Kids get to experience healing through arts and crafts,
and also find a community of other kids going through
the same thing. They are able to explore their interests
and regain some sense of control over their lives through
making art.
However, most kids and caregivers start participating in
the K&A program a year or more into treatment, which
means they don't get to experience all of the benefits
since the beginning of the journey.
The patient and caregiver journeys are not easy, but
they can be improved with Kids&Art's help.
HMW on-board kids and caregivers into the Kids&Art program sooner in the treatment journey without the typical overwhelm of a cancer diagnosis?
We redesigned their on-boarding experience leveraging
already established points of contact, but from a systemic
point of view.
STEP 1: Shipping, receiving, storage
K&A will ship their on-boarding kits to the hospital, where they'll be received by nurses and hospital staff. As soon as they open the shipping box, they'll be greeted by the hospital staff flyer, where they can learn more about the kit and the organization. The nurses are the first point of contact the patients have with Kids & Art, so it is crucial that they understand what the organization is about and believe in its mission. This flyer is made of a durable material that can be stored with the kits and accessed by the other nurses in the hospital as well.
On the front side of the flyer we give practical tips on how to introduce the kit and what is inside of it. To make it faster, we are using very straight-forward information and visual cues. On the back side, there is more information about Kids & Art and a QR code they could follow to learn more about it.
STEP 2: Handing on-boarding kit to patients and caregivers
When a patient first comes into the hospital, the kid and caregiver experience a lot of overwhelm, and we don't want to add to that with the kit. At first, we planned on leaving the on-boarding kit in the room for the patients to find it, but from testing we learned that without the proper introduction and context the kits would likely be left aside due to the overwhelm patients experience with the recent diagnosis. So instead, we are partnering with the nurses to introduce the kits to the families after being in the hospital for a couple of days, when they are a little more settled in.
The outside of the box is colorful and friendly, different from
the sterile feeling of the hospital room.
We also included a nutrition label and an ingredients section
to give caregivers a quick look into the benefits they can
access through the programs at Kids & Art.
We also added a tag on the box that quickly lists the benefits
Kids & Art offers alongside the services.
This tag doubles as a travel tag when folded inside out. This
reflects back on the idea of a journey, and helps kids regain
a sense of control by owning this box and the art pieces they
can create.
STEP 3: Unboxing
We leveraged a layered unboxing design, that presents a
welcome message upon opening, followed by the caregiver
booklet and the activity booklet and breathing card for the
kids.
At the bottom of the box there are non-toxic art materials
corresponding to the art activities in the booklet.
Caregiver booklet:
For this booklet we leveraged the use of visuals and testimonials to establish a relationship of trust with the caregivers. Interviews and testing showed us the hope caregivers feel by seeing kids who have been in this process and are happy and thriving despite the adversities, so we wanted to show K&A can help them achieve it as well with pictures.
The first testimonial comes from Purvi, the founder of the organization, who also went through the cancer treatment with her son. This personal account can be very powerful and show that this organization can be trusted. After that, caregivers can read more in-depth about the offered services and also see pictures of the participants in the program. Lastly they can also read more testimonials of other caregivers who also participate in the program.
Kids Flyer and Activities:
The kids flyer and activity cards rely on visuals to communicate, as some of the kids have not yet learned how to read. We want kids to go and experience a little of the Kids&Art experience with the the art activities, so we kept information simple and straightforward, leading them to the activities.
Process
Research
The first phase of this project was a big challenge considering our team didn't know each other, it was our first time working together, we didn't know Kids&Art and on top of that we were going through a pandemic that completely changed the creative process we knew. However, despite all the challenges, the team really stepped up and came up with creative work-arounds for these challenges.
A highlight worth mentioning is the user interviews: we interviewed young past patients, and from trial and error we understood that getting them talking was completely different than talking to an adult (especially over zoom). So we created an interview guide that included games, show and tell and from that we were able to understand their needs in a meaningful way.
We also had meetings with K&A, and together we came up with the project brief. They had a lot of research they had done beforehand, but hadn't really compiled it in a concise brief. Establishing a hierarchy of needs, what was going to be included inside the kit and defining material constraints was part of our collaboration.
Ideation and Prototyping
Based on the brief and insights from interviews, we created concepts and presented the top 6 to the client, which after discussion we were able to narrow down on the direction of the box and also the kind of unboxing experience they were looking for.
We chose a lunchbox style cardboard box with carrying straps that creates a metaphor about the journey they are about to begin with Kids & Art.
That enabled us to create our first prototype, with which we learned more about the sizing, content and other revisions we needed to make.
Because this was a fast project, we were not afraid of using low-res prototyping, as they were fast to make and easy to revise. We were able to quickly detect problems and solve them without investing a lot of time and resources.
With this prototype we received an Honorable Mention in
However, we knew that there were still a lot of unanswered
questions. So on the next phase, we planned on investing
more time in user testing and validating our project.
As mentioned before, we left a lot of questions unanswered
at the end of the first phase, and it was time to address them
in the next phase.
We had been looking at the on-boarding kit as a lone
object, so we zoomed out to consider the whole
on-boarding experience.
We did a first round of prototype testing and realized we
needed to focus on the caregivers and nurses just as
much as we were focusing on the kids when it comes to
this on-boarding experience.
We understood that without bringing all of those stakeholders
together and giving this on-boarding kit a proper context, it
would likely go unnoticed in the hospital.
We used ”Theater of Innovation” techniques to test quick and low resolution prototypes, as well as more high resolution prototypes later on in the process.
Testing during Covid-19 times posed its challenges, especially because this was a physical object, but we managed to come up with creative solutions.
We used visioning techniques to immerse our interviewees in the experience, as well as background images to better convey the situations in which they would be encountering these objects, and also interactive slides that would let users decide how to interact with the object instead of leading them on through the experience.
To guide the design in this experience, we drafted a journey map to guide us. Based on that we were able to better understand the artifacts that we needed and what we needed to include in them.
Alongside the on-boarding kit, we also focused on designing a more in-depth and targeted info booklet for caregivers and also a hospital staff flyer.
We put those artifacts through many iterations until we reached the final design.
